“I can proudly say that together with the other colleagues we have done a
very important and voluminous work. We close this year with a positive
balance of passed laws and reforms”.
This was the evaluation that the Albanian Parliament Speaker, Jozefina Topalli, made to the work of the entire year. In 12 months, the Albanian MPs have passed 219 acts, have held 155 hours of debate and 879 discussions.
Although most of the laws were approved only with the votes of the ruling party MPs, different to one year ago, the opposition has entered the Parliament and has even passed laws that required qualified majority.
Topalli says that the agreement reached with the opposition in Parliament is one of the most important for this year, which should be developed further, in the interest of the country’s EU integration.
The Speaker also mentioned the difficult moments of the year, when, according to her, there have been attempts to hit Parliamentary structure. She didn’t mention situations or persons, but insinuated the January 21st events.
These events also definitely closed the relations of the ruling party with the Albanian President, with whom they had harsh disagreements for some decrees.
“Although the Constitution and the Parliament structure was attacked, our stance has been right, based on the Constitution. It is our duty to protect the constitutionality in any situation, and above all, for protecting the Parliamentary structure.
The Speaker was also asked if she sees as difficult the challenge of the Presidential elections for the next year, and she declared that the key is at the Constitution.
“As for the agenda of different institutions, I want to reiterate that I respect the institution of the President, who is duty until a given moment. What I strongly believe withy my political conscience is the respecting of the Albanian Constitution. The Constitution is written on the base of a wide consensus, and it is the only way with which we can build the entire future agenda of all institutions”.
For the Parliament Speaker, the most important event of the next year that will give other nuances to the Albanian politics is the 100th anniversary of the independence.
Rama about Topalli’s speech
The opposition leader, Edi Rama, compared the annual analyses that the Parliament Speaker made to the work of this institution with the annual reports of the cooperatives in the communist regime.
Rama wrote through Twitter that the Parliament Speaker “measures the laws as tons of agricultural products for hectare, and blames the opposition for preventing the rain from falling”.
This comment came right after Topalli declared that during 2011, the Parliament has approved 450 laws and that this is a positive balance, after voting the laws that required majority.
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